During the past several weeks, Cortland State’s Alex Smith has answered to a handful of different names.

Coach. Quarterback. Sometimes even Alex.

There’s one term he’d rather ignore: old man. Unfortunately for him, it’s a beckoning he hears more and more from his teammates lately.

“The call me dad or grandpa,” said Smith, 24. “I’m actually not that old. I tell them that all the time. They don’t care.”

Neither do his problematic right knee and right shoulder, either of which can start barking at any given time and make Smith realize that chronological and physical ages are two separate issues.

“The right side of my body is just falling apart,” he said. “It’s just ridiculous.”

A little more than a month ago, Smith was a Red Dragons assistant coach who assumed his playing days were done. Now, he almost certainly is down to his last few competitive snaps.

The ones he has left will count for a lot.

Smith, a graduate student, has made the improbable leap from the sidelines to the huddle and will lead Cortland State (7-2) into its Cortaca Jug showdown Saturday at Ithaca (6-3).

Smith doesn’t have a lot of mobility left, but he is clearly on a roll. Smith has led the Red Dragons to four straight victories, and is 50-of-87 passing for 635 yards and seven touchdowns. He’s also coming off the best game of his career, a 56-42 shootout over Brockport in which he completed 22-of-33 passes for 324 yards and four touchdown passes.

“It’s like a dream, almost. Even when it’s rainy out and cold, it’s like, I’d rather be doing this than coaching,” he said.

The bonus portion of Smith’s career comes courtesy of an exception granted by the NCAA. Division III athletes have 10 semesters in which to complete eight semesters of eligibility. Smith burned four of those in his first two years at the school, 2004-05, when he was the starting quarterback.

In 2006, two more of those went down the drain when he tore the ACL in his right knee in the Red Dragons’ sixth game of the season. In his first game back in 2007, his senior year, he suffered the same injury to his right knee, necessitating another surgery and more comeback work.

“It’s so bad. It’s the worst experience ever,” Smith said of rehab. “The first, I was ready to go. The second time, it’s like, oh man.”

Smith tried to come back as a player in 2008, but the knee was still balky the previous spring. So he went to work as a volunteer assistant coach for the Red Dragons. He started 2009 as a graduate assistant coach in charge of wide receivers and kick returners, and pining away for the chance to do more than tell others how to play the sport.

“All day. Everyone does that,” he said. “That’s why coaches coach. They love the game. They just don’t have any eligibility left.”

The door for Smith to possibly lead by example again cracked open when starting Red Dragons quarterback Dan Pitcher went down with a season-ending knee injury in the second game of the season. Smith asked the NCAA to give him back a season of eligibility for his lost senior year, in 2007. The NCAA eventually gave him the go-ahead.

In a sense, that was the easy part. Smith was way out of game shape, and there was no training camp to ease him back into the driver’s seat. Red Dragons coach Dan MacNeil tried to get him as many reps as he could in practice, and also attempted to smooth things over with teammates who now saw Smith in a much different position of authority.

“It will put you in a pickle,” MacNeil said. “You (Smith) were coaching them. Now you are competing with them. The dynamic of it is very interesting. I got the players together and said, here’s a different (player). Where will it go? I have no idea. But I’m glad to have a competitor back in the program.”

While that spirit was the same, Smith’s two knee injuries forced him to reshape his physical approach to the position. During his first two years, he was a fast, athletic quarterback. Now, with a brace on his right leg, Smith isn’t going anywhere.

“I was a different player back then,” Smith said. “The knowledge of the game, I’m smarter than I ever was. There are times I want to drop back and fire it up. I just want to run the ball. I check myself all the time. I don’t know if I’m exciting as I was. But I’m still doing the things I need to do to win the game.”

It didn’t start out that way. Smith made his season debut in a 16-7 loss to Montclair State on Oct 10. He took three snaps. On one of them he fumbled. On another, he was sacked and hurt his right shoulder.

That injury wasn’t serious, a good break that saved Cortland’s season. In the same game, then-No. 1 quarterback Hudson Woodward suffered a season-ending shoulder injury.

That fast-tracked Smith into the starter’s role for the rest of the season, and Cortland State has been perfect since.

“We’re certainly less conservative with every snap he takes,” MacNeil said of the team’s offense. “Without him, we never would have orchestrated that kind of offensive onslaught (vs. Brockport).”

Smith will face a much different test in the heated game at Ithaca. In one sense, since this is his third Cortaca Jug game, it will be nothing he hasn’t seen before. At the same time, considering his circumstances, it will also be completely new territory.

“How I describe it to some people is I’m not nervous with butterflies,” he said. “I’ll be happy to play with butterflies. I’m going to enjoy every moment.”